All Blacks tear the Springboks apart

Hansen was delighted by the margin of New Zealand’s victory over South Africa, though he felt their start was sluggish. That has happened in two consecutive matches, and it can’t get more terrible than that for the Boks.

“But you’ve got to develop their decision-making, so we sort of overloaded them in terms of, “you’ve got to look for this” or “these are the sort of things you need to see”, and to communicate them”.

4 Make your tackles: This isn’t exactly news but this match underlined the vital importance of making your tackles against the All Blacks who are deadly once they have broken that first line of defence.

Watching the All Blacks dismantle the Springboks yesterday morning, it was hard to keep from being overwhelmed by a rising sense of panic.

“He’s pretty good this morning, so it looks positive”, said Hansen. But Elton Jantjies missed his first kick at posts – in fact his only kick at posts as it turned out – in the seventh minute.

The British and Irish Lions won and drew a Test in New Zealand; Australia in Dunedin led until the 79th minute and indeed Argentina last week in New Plymouth were drawing until the 60th minute, so yesterday’s game was set up as a reportedly-resurgent Springboks against an All Black team that was stagnating. You have to be wide awake against New Zealand, particularly when they are in the clinical mood they were in during this game.

I went down to the Springboks’ captain’s run the day before the game.

There were about a dozen of us there to find some sort of reason why they’d been so thoroughly trounced.

The Springboks started the second half strongly but once the initial drive wore off the All Blacks returned to their try-scoring ways, bringing up the record with Taylor’s try from a lineout drive on full-time. The match stats after half an hour actually reflected that the Boks had spent twice as long in the All Black 22, which tells you from how deep the All Black attacks came.

That’s why for every Damian McKenzie in an All Black back three, there is also an explosive powerhouse Rieko Ioane, whilst a reasonably pencil-like wizard named Beauden Barrett at No 10 benefits hugely from having a tall, near-110kg Sonny Bill Williams immediately outside him.

There is room for “little guys” … but for them to thrive, a shrewd balance needs to be struck, with them able to feed off the attention demanded by opponents to more power-based units nearby. Though again, it would the man who provided the assist – this time Aaron Smith – who should get all the credit.

“Then when the others come back, you’ve got a bigger pool”.

Reiko Ioane, Nehe Milner-Skudder, Scott Barrett and Brodie Retaliack all crossed the Springbok line in the first 35 minutes.